Sommaire pour May 2023 de Octane

I am 24 hours away from heading off to the concours at Amelia Island. I used to do some judging there but I haven’t since there was a changing of the guard among the organisers. It means that this year I will have more time to catch up with friends. That, and I’ll be able to do some filming with one of the Porsche 917s I drove a thousand years or so ago. I can’t say too much about it at the moment, but I am rather excited. 917s featured so prominently early on in my career and it’s still a car that gets me excited. Oh yes, it really gets the juices flowing. The 917 was the first serious sports-racing car I ever experienced, and nothing I have raced…

PRIOR TO ARRIVING at Thruxton Circuit in the ’Nash, the last time I’d spun a car was maybe 15 years ago. It wasn’t a pleasant experience: a left-hand-drive lorry pulled out on me on a dual-carriageway as I was overtaking, and it punted my 1986 Audi 100 into a complete 360. Possibly more than one rotation – I wasn’t keeping count – but, by amazing good fortune, there was a very low kerb and a wide verge, and the car pirouetted right around the lorry, bounced onto the grass and came to a halt. The nearside front door was stoved in, but the rest of the car was undamaged and I later bought a replacement door in the same colour and swapped them. So, while braver souls might suggest that…

MY BID TO WIN or even finish the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique 2023 came to an abrupt end on day three when Doris the Daimler, after some 800 trouble-free miles, decided enough was enough and coughed herself to a standstill halfway up a mountain. We were 2km north-east of Briançonnet, still within sight of the Côte d’Azur. Any nearer and I really could have thrown myself over a cliff. Essential planning began mid-way through 2022, when I secured/bribed myself a top navigator and service crew. Nobody reads maps better than nine-time veteran Bernard Northmore, and no two people I know can hustle a fully loaded Transit van between stages quicker than Clive Berry and his number one son Johan. Our entry was confirmed by November and our start position of 277…

‘I went looking for a vacuum leak on the BMW Z4 – and found an oil leak. More old rubber will need replacing soon’Robert Hefferon ‘Took the XK140 out for a spin to drop off a copy of Octane with a friend. I was worried it would be reluctant to start after two months lying idle, but it fired up straight away’ Robert Coucher ‘I’ve taken the leap and handed over the Alfa Spider for restoration. Much tea has been drunk while discussing the extent of its rust’ Sam Chick ‘It’s the hardest time of the year, when the weather is warmer but the roads are still salty. I’m praying for rain to wash the salt away so that I can try starting my Mercedes 230 Fintail on race fuel!’Massimo…

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE to bag a proper Grand Seiko for less than a service on a posh modern car. Better still, this will be a Grand Seiko that’s waterproof to 200m and has a screw-down crown and quick-set hours, so ideal if you do a bit of travelling. Like most GSs, it’s also sufficiently under the radar that you could wear it anywhere and no-one but the serious cognoscenti would know what you had on your wrist. And it’s rated to +/-10sec a year. That last feature will probably have given you a clue about the movement. It’s quartz – but before you flounce off, British Horological Journal in hand, being a Grand Seiko quartz means it’s a bit special. The 8J56 movement in this watch preceded the current 9F series.…

In a 1956 episode of the American gameshow I’ve Got a Secret, the panellists try and fail to guess what distinguishes an unremarkable-looking 50-year-old man. They are eventually put out of their misery when Clyde Tombaugh reveals: ‘I discovered the planet Pluto.’ Tombaugh identified the planet (as Pluto was then designated) in 1930 while working at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. His job at the time was to compare images of the sky taken several nights apart and look for any objects that had moved. It was repetitive, eye-straining work demanding the sort of enthusiasm for astronomy that had driven Tombaugh to build his own telescopes as a boy, using mail-order parts and anything he could scrounge off the family farm. He kept making his homebrew telescopes even as his…

TOM SHAXSON ‘The Ferrari 400 Superamerica could well be up there with the prettiest of cars I’ve ever photographed. The proportions are almost perfect in my opinion; its fabulous swooping tail is certainly a personal favourite part.’ Tom’s fantastic photography accompanies Matthew Hayward’s feature on pages 60-70. KEITH SEUME ‘Things don’t get much better than getting up early and spending the day hammering a high-revving 911 along empty Devon roads. It’s a visceral experience that leaves your ears ringing, your pulse racing and the biggest smile on your face this side of Christmas morning. Life is good.’ Porsche 911 S/ST: pages 102-110. STEPHEN DOBIE ‘I owned a Ford Puma in my early 20s but sold it when shinier new cars stole my gaze while I was staff writer at Octane’s…

You see cars advertised and described ‘as new’. Makes me sceptical. If it’s an old car, that probably means it’s been restored. In which case it will not be ‘as new’, more likely ‘better than new’. Pleases some, but not me. I like cars that look their age. That doesn’t mean I want to drive around in some battered, rusting wreck – heaven forfend, though I get the rat-rod thing. We’ll come back to that. No, for me patination can be very beautiful. The hint of dulling on a chromed surface that makes it easier on the eye; swirl marks on well-polished paintwork that tell you all you need to know about how loved the car is; gentle wear that makes leather trim so much more comfortable. I love all…

Meinhard von Gerkan and Volkwin Marg are not names well-known in Britain, but their signatures are prominent in Germany’s capital. As GMP Architects, they designed its infrastructure. Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof is a vast, multi-level railway interchange with an aesthetic inspired by an immoderate attachment to concrete, a love of garish mid-market shopping, and too much time spent watching Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, an Expressionist film of 1927 that is either visionary or dystopian depending on your reaction to space, fear and darkness. Future historians will surely note that Berlin’s best new buildings are by British architects. Foster’s Reichstag and David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum integrate astonishing new structure into debris left by Bomber Harris. There’s a moral and a metaphor there. Yet Berlin is a fine place to consider the state of the…

Andy Saunders is shaking his head in mild disbelief. ‘It was the end of an exhibition in a London art gallery,’ he says, ‘where I’d been invited to debut my Stratos Zero replica. I got talking with a guy who’d also had a car on show, a full-size model of a car he’d designed. Admittedly, it looked quite good but it didn’t move, it had no interior, no steering or suspension – it just sat there. ‘This guy asked me “Why do you do it? The money you must spend…” I said, “Well, the Zero owes me 25 grand.” “What part owes you 25 grand?” “All of it! Including tax and MoT.” And it turned out he’d spent something like £400,000 having his model built. I just couldn’t work it…

ROBERT COUCHER International editor ● 1955 Jaguar XK140 ANDREW ENGLISH Contributor ● 1962 Norton Dominator● 1965 Aston Martin DB5● 1967 Triumph GT6 GLEN WADDINGTON Associate editor ● 1989 BMW 320i Convertible● 1999 Porsche Boxster SANJAY SEETANAH Advertising director ● 1981 BMW 323i Top Cabrio● 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante MARK DIXON Deputy editor ● 1927 Alvis 12/50● 1927 Ford Model T pick-up● 1942 Fordson Model N tractor● 1955 Land Rover Series I 107in● 1966 Ford Mustang 289 JAMES ELLIOTT Editor-in-chief ● 1965 Triumph 2.5 PI● 1968 Jensen Interceptor● 1969 Lotus Elan S4 ROBERT HEFFERON Art editor ● 2004 BMW Z4 3.0i JOHN SIMISTER Contributor ● 1960 Singer Gazelle conv● 1961 Saab 96● 1972 Rover 2000 TC● 1989 Mazda MX-5 Eunos MATTHEW HOWELL Photographer ● 1962 VW Beetle 1600● 1969 VW/Subaru…

READING THIS SORRY paragraph will take longer than the moments last October it describes. I’m bimbling along the A45 Northampton ring road, 60mph or so with the roof down, a beautiful afternoon. There’s a steadily tightening blind left curve and suddenly, up ahead, a decade-old grey Astra being driven erratically and slowly, weaving left and right. Very little time to react. There’s no hard shoulder, in fact nowhere to pull left at all, just an Armco barrier and a wooded embankment. I indicate to pull out, check over my right shoulder – and from nowhere some fat-arsed SUV thunders past. No options left. I brake as hard as I can and go into the back of the Astra. Which had stopped dead. Somewhat bewildered, I gather my wits and then…

NOT SINCE THE outlandish Bulldog has Aston Martin even attempted a mid-engined supercar. While the outrageous ’70s wedge remained an under-developed one-off oddity, the £2.5m Valkyrie’s 150-car production run was sold out long before its fraught, seven-year development collaboration between Aston Martin, Adrian Newey and Red Bull was completed. It’s easy to see why: this is a spectacular machine. Newey’s influence can be seen in every functional detail. More than any production car before it, the Valkyrie has been shaped by the uncompromising pursuit of aerodynamic efficiency – specifically, colossal downforce with minimal drag. Aston’s design team was allowed to finesse the surfaces but only if the aesthetic enhancements came without functional penalty. At the Valkyrie’s heart is a Cosworth-developed 6.5-litre V12 supplemented by a Rimac-developed battery hybrid and KERS…

AFTER MORE THAN a century of putting a shine on Britain’s shoes, Kiwi boot polish will no longer be on sale in our shops. It seems that an Englishman (and one assumes also Welsh, Scots and Irish) is no longer judged by the shine on his shoes and that, in the face of falling sales, the American multinational owner of Kiwi has decided that it doesn’t make economic sense to continue in the British market. The Army, an important customer and an institution still committed to ‘spit and polish’ and where the ‘bulling’ of kit is almost a competitive sport, is, so to speak, up in arms. Our nearest Kiwi factory is in France but at the time of writing there are no immediate plans to send in the SAS…

NOMOS TANGENTE NEOMATIK BLUE GOLD We’re fans of this Glashütte watchmaker, which has always offered watches of a quality well above their price, but this moved up a notch a few years ago with the thin (3.2mm) DUW 3001 in-house automatic calibre that’s powering this watch. The news here is the dial, though. It’s sunburst polished, but gets its depth from being gold-plated before it is galvanised. You have a choice of 35mm or 39mm case size and it’s hard to choose between dial and movement – you’ll just have to alternate which way round you wear it! 35mm £2940, 39mm £3080, nomos-glashuette.com TAG HEUER CARRERA 60TH ANNIVERSARY Hard to believe that Jack Heuer’s original 2447 Carrera gets its bus pass this year. We’ll mark the 60th anniversary properly later…

24-26 March Classic Car Auctions, Birmingham, UK 25 March Barons, Southampton, UK Oldtimer Galerie, Toffen, Switzerland 27 March Osenat, Fontainebleau, France 28 March – 1 April Mecum, Glendale, USA 29 March Brightwells, online H&H, Bickenhill, UK (motorcycles) 30 March Charterhouse, Sparkford, UK (motorcycles) 31 March Ewbank’s, Send, UK 1-2 April ACA, King’s Lynn, UK 2 April Aguttes, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 7 April Gooding & Company, Lynchburg, USA 8 April Historics, Ascot, UK 12-13 April Brightwells, online 13-15 April Barrett-Jackson, Palm Beach, USA Mecum, Houston, USA 15 April Hampson, Holywell, UK (motorcycles) Manor Park Classics, Runcorn, UK 16 April Bonhams, Goodwood, UK 17 April Aguttes, Paris, France 21-22 April Branson Auction, Branson, USA Cheffins, Cambridge, UK Vicari, Biloxi, USA 22 April WB & Sons, Killingworth, UK 22-23 April Bonhams, Stafford, UK (motorcycles)…

1957 ALFA ROMEO GIULIETTA VELOCE SPIDER, $175,000 After being discovered in a barn ten years ago, this beautiful Alfa is now looking incredible following a ‘concours quality’ restoration. A fully documented US car, it’s on-the-button and ready to enjoy. lbilimited.com (US) 1982 LANCIA MONTECARLO £17,950 Optioned with the targa roof, leather seats and air conditioning, this 61,000-mile Montecarlo not only looks fantastic but has been well maintained – with recent bills totalling £10,000. A rare breed. dukeoflondon.co.uk (UK) 1969 HONDA S800M COUPÉ €30,000 Thanks to its 791cc four-cylinder engine, revving to 8500rpm, the S800 coupé was a magnificent piece of engineering, and also brilliant to drive. This one looks great in original Adria Blue as well. garagisti.pt (PT) 1974 CITROËN DS23 PALLAS E AUD $79,990 For many this is peak…

WHAT TO PAY Expect to pay around £1500 for a viable project these days. Budget between £2500 and £3500 for a running and driving car, up to about £6500 for one of the best, although exceptional examples with low miles are potentially worth upwards of £10,000. Prices are generally higher in Europe. Phase 2 models tend to be more sought after, but Phase 1s are rarer so there’s not too much variation in the values – it’s all about condition. WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR Very tidy-looking cars can hide terminal rust underneath. Inspect the rear chassis legs, subrame mounts and the boot floor – especially around the exhaust hanger. The A-posts can rot, especially around the door hinges, as does the area under the washer bottles. If maintained, the…

Like many of you who read this magazine I call myself a ‘car guy’. I apply the term generically and, when I use it, it applies to both men and women. It started a while back when I noticed at automotive events women would come up to me and say: ‘Hey, I’m a car guy, too.’ I consider myself a car guy because it’s the environment I’m most comfortable in. Although I have raced cars, I certainly don’t consider myself a race car driver. Just because I can afford to do something doesn’t mean I’m any good at it. I remember standing next to Jenson Button at Goodwood one year, he in a form-fitting race suit with his 6% body fat, looking handsome. And me in my one-size-too-small race suit…

Since last year, Mercedes-Benz has been able to lay claim to the most valuable car in the world after the sale of its 1955 Uhlenhaut SLR for $143million. Prior to that, the highest price paid for a Benz was a smidge under 30 mill’ for a 1954 W196 sold by Bonhams in 2013. A number of pre-war 500 models are worth a couple of million, as well as any old Merc with a screaming compressor strapped to its engine. And each of only 30 or so lightweight Gullwings are knocking on for eight mill’ a pop – yet still the list of the ‘most expensive cars in the world’ is dominated by red ones from Maranello. Karl Benz’s Patent-Motorwagen, bolted together in 1885, was the world’s first motor car and…

What would the Puma look like now if Ian’s Callum design house was appointed like TWR was back in the 1990s? His team has sketched it exclusively for Octane. ‘The original Puma was comically voluptuous as it had an exaggerated form to emphasise its sporting intentions. Such a vehicle was so perfect for Ford at that time as the brand was all about affordable, fun, great-to-drive cars,’ says Ian. ‘We have approached this new “sporty Ford” with a more cubist form, a style that I’m sure will prevail in the coming years. ‘The distinctive crease, as was on the original, has transformed to a major form, evolving into a full haunch. The whole car hangs around this dynamic feature. The rear respects aero with a graphically simple venturi and cut-off…

It seems fitting that Daimler, by Royal Appointment since 1900 entitled to the legend ‘Motor Car Manufacturers to HM the King’, once made the biggest British car in production. Such was the claim in The Autocar in January 1948, though that was in a road test of the DE27, which, as the magazine admitted, was within a ‘few inches in wheelbase and overall length’ of the straight-eight-powered Daimler DE36 – which made the DE27 the second biggest British car in production at the time. If not quite fit for the King, it was perfect for Princess Elizabeth. And the 1947 DE27 you see here was Her Royal Highness’s first State limousine. The young Princess had grown up with the Royal Daimlers not only of her father but also those of…

I’VE BEEN UNUSUALLY mature since buying the Elan late last year. Where once I would have piled in on it in a youthful frenzy, now I find myself content to bide my time, tinker a little and wait for the longer, warmer days. Maybe it is because subconsciously I know it could be a forever car and there is no hurry; more likely it is because these 55-year-old bones take one look at winter weather and prefer to sit in with a Cup A Soup and laptop and stockpile the parts I will need when I set to the car in spring. Ordering things is doing things, isn’t it? Even buying parts is all-change from when I was last an Elan owner. Where once Paul Matty Sports Cars was my…

DOES THIS SOUND familiar: write a list, tick off a job, add two more jobs? Then repeat until the list fills a full side of A4… If you’re nodding in agreement, then you’ll know exactly how I was feeling a few months back, before I in my Beetle, Mark Dixon in his Mustang and a few other mates set off for the Spa 6-Hour Historic in Belgium. The good news was that, as the road-trip got closer, that list actually started to get shorter and shorter, to the point where I thought I’d done everything to make my old ’62 drive well and behave itself. Over the following four days the Beetle drove well; it never let me down and by the time I pulled back onto my drive we’d…

THIS IS CERTAINLY one of those slightly scary ‘I remember driving these when they were new’ moments. Are we seriously discussing the L322 as a classic? There has been a lot of chatter recently about the television series Clarkson’s Farm, in which presenter Jeremy Clarkson’s glorious L322 regularly features. If you’ve been watching then there’s a good chance you’ve also found yourself browsing the classifieds for one. There’s suddenly something very right about this era of Range Rover, and it feels like a good time to revisit it. The timeless, classy looks – both inside and out – are a big part of its appeal but, thanks to significant input and funding from BMW (although it was actually launched under Ford’s ownership), the L322 was a far more comprehensively engineered…

AUSTIN-HEALEY 3000 by Scalextric Since 1957, Scalextric slot cars have enthralled several generations. Part of the reason for this longevity is that the system has constantly evolved and incorporated new technology. Today you can race your car using your mobile phone, with no wires to get in the way. Even the original Scalextric sets made use of the latest tech available at the time: electric rather than clockwork motors. The inventor, Fred Francis, had previously offered ‘Scalex’ clockwork-powered cars and, when he developed his new electric raceway system, he adapted the existing tinplate bodies. The first three cars were Maserati and Ferrari racers and an Austin-Healey sports car. Plastic was used for the bodies of subsequent releases, which not only allowed for more accurate moulded shapes but also made it…

£8,687,500 (£9,792,500) 2022 Bugatti Chiron Profilée RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France. 1 February £5,118,000 (£5,706,000) 1951 Ferrari 340 America Barchetta by Touring Artcurial, Paris, France. 3 February £3,597,500 (£4,055,000) 2003 Ferrari Enzo RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France. 1 February £3,248,000 (£3,661,250) 1991 Ferrari 643 RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France. 1 February £2,749,000 (V3,098,750) 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France. 1 February £2,100,500 (V2,367,500) 2020 McLaren Speedtail RM Sotheby’s, Paris, France. 1 February £1,990,000 (£2,216,800) 1992 Ferrari F40 Artcurial, Paris, France. 4 February £1,988,500 (£2,216,800) 1929 Bugatti Type 35C Artcurial, Paris, France. 3 February £1,946,000 (£2,185,000) 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport Coupé ‘Chambas’ Bonhams, Paris, France. 2 February £1,946,000 (£2,185,000) 1988 Ferrari F40 Bonhams, Paris, France. 2 February…

1960 Facel Vega HK500 H&H Classics, Buxton, Derbyshire, UK 26 April, handh.co.uk How brave are you feeling? This HK500 is thought to be one of 98 UK-supplied right-hand-drive examples, which has been with the current owner for the last 47 years. Not driven for many decades, it’s presented in ‘garage find’ condition today. Although it is said to be mostly complete, it will need substantial work. Being one of the later 6.3-litre, disc-brake cars, it’s a desirable spec, too. It is offered as a no-reserve lot. 1995 Toyota Supra RZ Brightwells, Leominster, UK 6 May, brightwells.com Just like everything interesting and Japanese from the 1990s, Supras have become hot property over the past few years. It’s nice to see an unmodified example, and the full-fat twin-turbo RZ model, too –…

YOU WON’T FIND many people more appreciative of a good buffet than me. If I see one after a long day on a rally it means I can steam in, grab a plate of food, refuel and then go and get on with the next stage of my work, which is editing, captioning and uploading the day’s photos and then writing some rally reports. People think I just spend the day (or night) taking photos on the road, but that’s only the start of it – rallies are all-consuming and there’s no downtime in what can be an 18-hour day. Often, I’ll be the first to leave and the last to arrive every day and then probably have a good few more hours of work ahead of me, all fuelled…